Jim Crow Primary Sources

Portion of an article on the American "lynching industry," printed in 1915 in the African-American publication The Crisis.

View these staggering lynching statistics, listed by state and race and covering the years spanning from 1882 to 1968.

A sermon delivered by Dr. Howard E. Jones, a white reverend, to his white congregation following the lynching murder of Ed Johnson, a black man accused of rape.

Full text of Thomas Dixon's novel The Clansman, along with illustrations, and a biography of the author.

T.R. Davidson describes growing up and working in North Carolina during the Jim Crow era.

Thelma Williams reflects on her early years spent in Louisiana and North Carolina, where Jim Crow customs were deeply entrenched.

The full text of W. E. B. Du Bois's civil rights manifesto, The Souls of Black Folk.

The full text of Booker T. Washington's autobiography, Up From Slavery.

"Mob Rule in New Orleans: Robert Charles and His Fight to Death, the Story of His Life, Burning Human Beings Alive, Other Lynching Statistics," an essay written by Ida B. Wells-Barnett in 1900.

"A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States," an essay written by Ida B. Wells-Barnett in 1895.

"The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line," a series of essays by Charles W. Chesnutt, a prominent black author and activist.

The majority ruling and the dissent filed by the United States Supreme Court in The Civil Rights Cases of 1883.

Bishop Henry McNeal Turner's statement in protest of the Supreme Court ruling in The Civil Rights Cases of 1883.

Letter from Mrs. J. H. Adams, Macon, Georgia to the Bethlehem Baptist Association, Chicago, Illinois, April 1918.

Letter from Cleveland Galliard of Mobile, Alabama to the Bethlehem Baptist Association, Chicago, Illinois, April 1917.